Houston’s never been this warm, this late in the year.

The mercury has reached 102 degrees this afternoon at Bush Intercontinental Airport, reports the National Weather Service, smashing the old record of 98 degrees set in 1912.

Houston has never recorded a temperature above 100 degrees after Sept. 12. Until today.

Marcos Gonzalez, an iron worker at the Houston Dynamo soccer team's new stadium, drinks a cup of water today. (James Nielsen/Chronicle)

And then there’s this ugly statistic: with 102 degrees today this year has the “distinguished honor” of recording both the earliest 102 degree day (June 5) and latest 102-degree day in a calendar year.

Additionally, today’s was the city’s 45th 100-degree day, giving us 40 percent more this year than the next closest year, 1980.

Statistics through Monday. (National Weather Service)

The heat should begin to moderate a little bit by Thursday, but the next cool front looks to be at least 10 days away.

If there was a credible whiff of rain in the 7-day forecast I’d be all over it. Fact is, the next week looks really dry, and the outlook only improves a little bit thereafter. This can change, of course, but the outlook right now is just really grim.

It turns out that vitamin D plays crucial role for preventing cold and flu of most strains if not all…

It is quite possible that they can be totally wrong about humans causing climate change…. All it just takes someone that is not brainwashed to think that way in order to see things totally different… That’s why majority eventually lose…

Don’t you dare come in here with your mumbo jumbo global warming nonsense! It was REALLY cold for a few days in February! How could we have global warming when it gets colder than it ever has!? Don’t try to convince me that I came from a monkey or that the world is older than 8,000 years either friend. What do I look like? An idiot?

Silly mad cougar …are you really that brainwashed to think the earth has only been around for 8000 years?? Really? What about all those fossils we’ve found or what about the pyramids? You do sound like an idiot.

I’m one of those that references 1980 as a bad summer. I was up near Lubbock. 1992, I think was a really bad July up there.
I guess now we all get to say in the future, “Man, its hot, but it ain’t nowhere near as bad as 2011.”

Dont forget. It is even hotter up around Dallas. It is 105 today No. I am not a Cowboys fan. Just want us to keep it in perspective. Actually, I live in Clear Lake. It’s usually about 4 or 5 degrees cooler here than downtown. Y’all come on down and sit on the dock.

What a horrible forecast Oh well… it is what it is. Thanks, at least for being honest. That’s more than the goons at the Weather Channel do when they throw in the 10 or 20% chance 7 days out, and then 5 days in turn those to 0. Face it: 0% chance of rain. If it happens, then it’s 100%.

I would guess that it’s because whatever model they use to automatically generate those 10-day forecasts had a bad run. The truth is, according to human forecasters, there’s not much hope over the next 7 to 10 days aside from scattered afternoon thunderstorms.

Well, TWC also has 40% for the 20th, and it’s been that way for a couple of days. I believe they change their forecast at least daily, so it would be hard to classify that a “bad run.” Sounds more like a “difference of opinion” to me.

We do not know–we cannot know–if human-caused climate change produced this particular horrible summer. We do know that it makes such events more likely, and that adding heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere will make summers increasingly hotter on average in the decades to come.

Apparently our nation has decided to pretend this isn’t real or, if real, isn’t dangerous. We are going to ride this runaway train wherever it goes.

Yo @FreedomRide, I just don’t understand how a liberal can use the word ‘freedom’ in their moniker. You think we humans can make this change? Perhaps you think people are wizards! I read Harry too but understand it is a story.

And if everything isn’t already bad enough, now a large fire has broken out in the heavily wooded part of George Bush Park, just off Westheimer Parkway. Channel 13′s website has live video from their helicopter.

Did you say we could “realistically” rule out a hurricane strike on Texas this year? Well, read this quoute from a blog by Dr. Jeff Masters (www.wunderground.com):

“The NOGAPS and GFS models are predicting the Western Caribbean could see the development of a tropical depression 7 – 8 days from now, as moisture from the Eastern Pacific flows northeast into the Caribbean.

It is really amazing that so many have been fooled by the few…. Have any of you who believe in “climate change” or Global Warming ever looked at the raw data???? If any say that they have I would say that you are probably lying since it has been destroyed so that no one can back check the evidence that they say they have seen…. All you will find is the factual inaccurate data that they have manipulated into the findings that they want…. Have any of you who believe have you ever been involved in making a model in a computer program???? If you have you know that if you put in certain criteria you will get the answers that you want…. Not facts, but a biased model based upon biased data that you have entered….
If this climate change was really real, then why doesn’t the high preistess of Global WArming Al Gore actually do what he decries for others to do???? He jets around in a private jet and runs huge homes that burn massive amounts of energy all the while telling us that we should not do as he does for it is killing “Mother Earth”…. Can anyone say hypocrite….

weather.com says NEXT Tuesday a 60% chance of rain followed by 60 again on Wed and 40 on Thursday. Of course, several times throughout the summer, this same weather.com predicted rain 10 days out, only to decrease the chances to nil as we got closer to the expected rain date.

[...] absurd. That was a good 20 degrees off. Just to put things in perspective, here is a graph of the 2011 record heat in Southeast Texas compared to an average year and the hottest year recorded [...]

If this heat and especially this drought keeps up we will be seeing more fires spring up like the one that started in George Bush park today and many others recently. I saw the first reference in the news today surmizing about what the impact of the losses from all of these fires will have on our insurance rates. Ad that cost to the extra cost we already pay in Texas from hurricane and tornado loses and before long we will be talking serious money every time a check needs to be written for insurance coverage. Then there are the high automobile rates we pay as the drunk driving capital of the US.

Forget that A/C dome and hurricane barrier protection for Houston and environs. Let’s use the money instead to move somewhere with less natural disasters and a better climate.

Houston “The Energy Capital of the World” is taking on new meaning as we keep piling up 100+ days here.

Update. Article in the Chron says State Farm will up homeowner’s insurance rates next January by an average of 9.6 % in Harris County and 15% in Montgomery County. And deductibles will be going up too. These people know how to cover their costs and make a buck too.

All the folks who deride the idea that Planet Earth has entered a new geological warming period are somewhat silent.
C’mon, folks. Speak up.
Yeah…there is a difference between weather and climate…but we’re past that point now. Records indicate this warming period is a geological fact and not some leftist fantasy.
Whether the folly of mankind is contributing to this situation is debatable. But some of the data is scary…and some of the stats that can be directly attributed to mankind are scary.
Anybody got some extra sun-block?

Texas has a long history of droughts. In the late 1520′s or early 1530′s one of the Spanish explorers met a group of Indian near what is now Presidio and they reported to him that it had not rained in over 2-years, and they beggen him, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions to make it rain as they believed he and his companions were gods as the Indians had never seen a white man before.

I guess the alleged “climate change” and “global warming” that was going on at that time must have stopped at some time.

As to “global warming,” remember the Middle East, the Tigress and Euphrates Rivers were the bread basket of the ancient world, lush tropical paradise and now that region is desert areas. There were not any SUV’s or industries around back then to have caused that change.